NXP and Enfucell give cold comfort to biopharmaceutical supply chain

Medical staff can now use an NFC phone to check that vaccines, hormones and other biopharmaceutical products have been kept at the correct temperature throughout the supply chain, using a disposable temperature logging foil that can be attached to each individual item.

“This solution will support reduction of biopharmaceutical waste, increase safety and efficacy of biopharmaceutical products and provide visibility when and where the product was handled incorrectly,” NXP, which developed the foil in partnership with battery specialist Enfucell, explains.

“Biopharmaceutical products play an increasingly important role in the pharmaceutical industry,” the chip maker adds. “To be effective and safe, these products have to be kept in the cold chain from production to administration.

“Cold chain monitoring is mostly done using either chemical temperature loggers or reusable electronics loggers, both are inadequate. Chemical temperature loggers can only detect simple cold chain excursion and do not indicate when the event occurred. Reusable electronics loggers are expensive and bulky, therefore only deployed at pallet and not item level. Moreover, it is cumbersome to recycle them.”

The foil contains an Enfucell printed battery, an NFC antenna and NXP’s NHS3100 IC, a single chip temperature logging solution that integrates a temperature sensor, an NFC interface, an accurate time reference, a non-volatile temperature logging memory and programmable Cortex M0+ processor.

“The embedded NFC interface supports read-out of the product’s status by means of an NFC-enabled smartphone or reader at any point in the logistic chain or by medical staff administering the product,” NXP says.

“Enfucell’s battery technology offers a thin, flexible and eco-friendly power source which can be printed onto the flexible foil.

“The demonstrator’s battery capacity, along with the ultra-low power characteristics of NHS3100, offers a shelf life of one year and supports active logging for two years after activation.”